


Act 1: We Are Stars

by sapphire2309



Series: GOLDENEYE [2]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 16:36:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12193644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire2309/pseuds/sapphire2309
Summary: The meeting that never was.





	Act 1: We Are Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is nowhere near as good as I wanted it to be. But if I sit around waiting for perfect all day, I'll never share this with you. So, here goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dialogue is lifted directly from the Season 2 episode Forging Bonds. Most of it is in italics. Some of it isn't. Basically, if anything sounds familiar, it's probably from there.

1: a street in New York on a bright 1998 summer day, or: she's over bored and self assured

_Follow the lady. All you gotta do is follow the lady._

Neal isn't unfamiliar with Lady Luck. She brought him here, to New York. She had an eye out for him when he was all but tripping over his own feet. And now, she's pulling him towards this particular classic con, telling him _You've got this, you'll walk away with double of what's in your pocket right now._

_It's all a game of you versus me._

Neal trusts in himself, in his hands, in the Queen of Hearts in his left pocket. But, more than his own skill, he trusts in his instincts. They tell him which marks to pick, which moment is best to make the switch.

_Where is she? Where is she? Watch her. Watch her._

Oh, he's watching. The game, obviously, with most of his attention, and also the people crowded around it, the energy, slipping through them without attracting attention by being _just like them_ , by not arousing any suspicion.

_She's a sneaky lady, but I think she likes you._

"She's back in the middle," he says, at just the right moment, with perfect cadence and perfect disregard for the order of things. Disrupts the energy flowing around this curious crowd of New Yorkers, pulls it towards himself. Puts up his own money, and falls back into the rhythm of the man's hands and voice.

_Follow her fast, follow her slow. My hands are fast, your eyes are slow._

Technically speaking, it's impossible for physical human movement to be faster than human perception, but he lets that slide. The crux of it is that the swap is already made, that even if he follows the card that's supposed to be the Queen with all his focus, he'll never win.

_Show me the smile on the lady's face and you... walk away with it all._

_You've got it all wrong,_ Neal doesn't say. _You don't see her smile, ever. You just smell her perfume, hear the whispering of her skirts as they trail behind her. You never see her. But she guides you anyway._

He switches the card on the left, smiles delightedly, scoops up his cash, plays the diffident winner for a quarter of a minute, and promptly disappears.

This score gives him just enough to ditch the hefty rent on this Manhattan apartment and invest in a cheap, rundown warehouse instead. Invest in his nimble, careful, forger's fingers, in his discerning eye, in his skill. In _himself_.

Lady Luck says it's the way to go. So he goes.

-:-

2: that same New York street, at the same time, or: hello, hello, hello, how low?

This kid is _brilliant._

He slipped into the crowd without Moz noticing him till he raised his voice. He didn't let on a single hint that he was playing them like violins. He pulled a swap so near invisible that Moz would think it hadn't happened if he hadn't seen his partner swap the Queen out himself. 

And, to top it off, he walked away with the money before Moz could shake his stunned daze for long enough to think.

 _Brilliant._ Natural-born talent. Exactly the kind of partner a brain like his should merit. The front man he's spent his entire life looking for. 

He'd tail the kid himself if he hadn't made himself so conspicuous by all but _announcing_ himself as the second man in the con. He has to settle for sending one of the kids in his training program after him, which isn't so bad, as compromises go. Still. This feels like it could change his life. He wants to do everything himself.

(He probably should have done everything himself.)

-:-

3: another street, about an hour later, or: i feel stupid, and contagious.

Moz trudges down the stairs onto the street, not even trying to look less dejected than he is. He just picked a lock with finesse he's never seen in himself before, all to watch the door swing open to reveal a decidedly empty apartment. 

Well, not precisely _empty_. There's shelves on the wall and a radiator, but that's it. No signs of the person he's looking for.

This isn’t right. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to meet the stranger who just cleaned him out of a day’s earnings and convince him to work with him for the score of a lifetime and _retire_.

He abandoned what little he had for this shot in the dark, and he wasn’t even _aiming_ right.

He's already seen dreams of riches and better cons. He can't unsee them. And, as brilliant as he is, he's not cut out to be a front man for the kinds of cons he has in mind.

He glances at a nearby news stand. The kid who fed him the location grins at him. Still hasn't learned the art of reading body language. Moz expects better from his kids.

The kid clearly wants to know what happened, but he lingers by the news stand, peers at headlines.

At least he's starting to get a hang of subtlety.

Mozzie sighs, shakes his head, and walks in the opposite direction. He doesn't want company.

By now, he should know better than to put all his faith into such improbable paths.

(He doesn't know better. Probably never will.)

**Author's Note:**

> Have you heard [Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg)? Have you heard [this jazz cover of it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdgWiWrtMZo)? I'm gonna say that this was inspired by the jazz cover, because it fits with the time period and aesthetic. (We're gonna be _really quiet_ about the fact that the slight off-beat nature of the lyrics in the jazz cover drives me NUTS , and also the fact that i listened to the Nirvana version while actually writing this thing, okay?)


End file.
